English Discourse Analysis:

An Introduction

Rachel Whittaker (Grp 41)

Mick O’Donnell, Laura Hidalgo (Grp 46)

1. Introduction
1.1 Contact

Group 46:
Mick O’Donnell (7 Feb – 23 March)
Modulo VI bis 311 michael.odonnell@uam.es
Laura Hidalgo (30 March – 18 May)
Modulo VI bis 306 laura.hidalgo@uam.es
Course Coordinator:
Coordinator Rachel Whittaker rachel@uam.es

Web page (for Mick’s part of the course): go to the

course page under the department, and click on link.

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1. Introduction
1.2 Units (i)

Teacher: Mick O’Donnell

UNIT 1. English Discourse Analysis: an Introduction
UNIT 2. Context of Situation: Register (i) : Field, Tenor and Mode
UNIT 3. Context of Situation: Register (ii): Written/Spoken
Language
UNIT 4. Context of Culture: Genre in English; Genre Analysis
UNIT 5. The Analysis of Casual Conversation
UNIT 6. Structure in Casual Conversation
UNIT 7. The Organization of Discourse Structure in English:
Theme-Rheme, Thematic Progression

1. Introduction
1.2 Units (ii)
Teacher: Laura Hidalgo
UNIT 8.The Organization of Discourse Content in English: Topic,
Macrostructures
UNIT 9. Discourse Coherence and the Interpretation of English
Discourse: World Knowledge, Schema Theory
UNIT 10. The Organization of Information Structure in English
Discourse: Given/New Information
UNIT 11. Discourse Unity. Resources for Texture in English: Cohesion
UNIT 12. – 14. Applications of DA in English
DIFFERENT AREAS: Critical Discourse Analysis, DA and gender,
analyzing news genres, discourse analysis in the teaching of EFL,
the advertisement as a genre; advertising language

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 1. Introduction
1.3 Evaluation
1. A portfolio of texts, analyzed for different features of
the discourse during the course.
2. Analysis and interpretation of selection of texts:
presentation to class + print version.
3. Final examination, on prepared texts.
1 + 2 = 40%, 3 = 60%

A pass in the exam is necessary for the

portfolio and analyses to be considered.

Final Exam
You are given in advance
3 texts, and weeks to
prepare your analyses.
In the exam, you are
offered 2of the texts,
and need to analyse just
1.
So ideally, prepare 2 of
the 3 texts.
You need to analyse:
• Register (in table form)
• Genre
• Other analyses from
class, those most
appropriate for the given
text.
•Refer to readings.
•Interpret your analysis

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Cheltenham has been welcoming visitors for three hundred years, ever
since the discovery of the first natural spring led to the
development of the elegant spa town.
Cheltenham is renowned for its Regency architecture, stylish shopping,
colourful parks and floral displays, horse racing, music and
literature festivals.
Fine accommodation combine to make Cheltenham Spa an excellent touring base
and a wide variety of for the Cotswolds.
restaurants

(you) Make our Tourist Information Centre your

first call.
Our friendly team provide an extensive range of services ...
We can book accommodation ...
We supply tickets for local events ...
In summer, we organise a varied programme of Scenic
Coach Tours of the Cotswalds
We stock a wide range of maps, walking trails...
We can help you with advice on ...

Premodifiers (remember Lengua II?)

• Cheltenham has been welcoming visitors for

three hundred years, ever since the discovery of
the first natural spring led to the development of
the elegant spa town.
• Cheltenham is renowned for its Regency
architecture, stylish shopping, colourful parks and
floral displays, horse racing, music and literature
festivals.
• Fine accommodation and a wide variety of
restaurants combine to make Cheltenham Spa an
excellent touring base for the Cotswolds.

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1. Introduction
1.4 What is Discourse Analysis?

Discourse Analysis:
• Wikipedia: “a general term for a number of
approaches to analyzing written, spoken, signed
language use or any significant semiotic event.

1. Introduction
1.4 What is Discourse Analysis?

Brown and Yule 1983. Discourse Analysis

In this book we take a primarily linguistic approach to
the analysis of discourse. We explain how humans
use language to communicate and, in particular, how
addressers construct linguistic messages for
addressees and how addressees work on linguistic
messages in order to interpret them. We call on
insights from all of the interdisciplinary areas we
have mentioned …. But our primary interest is the
traditional concern of the descriptive linguist, to give
an account of how forms of language are used in
communication

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1. Introduction
1.8 How does DA relate to Other approaches?
“areas mentioned” their interests their data

Sociolinguistics Social interaction in transcribed spoken

conversation; social data
context
Psycholinguistics Issues related to short constructed
language texts (textoids) or
comprehension sequences of written
sentences
Philosophical Semantic rels bet pairs constructed sentences
linguistics of sentences; relation
sentences and the
world, truth-values

Computational Models of discourse Short constructed

linguistics processing texts

1. Introduction
1.4 What is Discourse Analysis?

Stubbs, M. 1983 Discourse Analysis

The term discourse analysis is very ambiguous. I will
use it in this book to refer mainly to the linguistic
analysis of naturally occurring connected speech or
written discourse. Roughly speaking, it refers to
attempts to study the organisation of language above
the sentence or above the clause, and therefore to
study larger linguistic units, such as conversational
exchanges or written texts. It follows that discourse
analysis is also concerned with language use in social
contexts, and in particular with interaction or
dialogue between speakers.

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1. Introduction
1.4 What is Discourse Analysis?

Discourse analysis is sometimes defined as the

analysis of language 'beyond the sentence'. This
contrasts with types of analysis more typical of
modern linguistics, which are chiefly concerned
with the study of grammar: the study of smaller
bits of language, such as sounds (phonetics and
phonology), parts of words (morphology), meaning
(semantics), and the order of words in sentences
(syntax). Discourse analysts study larger chunks of
language as they flow together.
Deborah Tannen
(From Linguistic Society of America web)

1. Introduction
1.4 What is Discourse Analysis?

Discourse analysis does not presuppose a

bias towards the study of either spoken or
written language. In fact, the monolithic
character of the categories of speech and
writing has been widely challenged,
especially as the gaze of analysts turns to
multi-media texts and practices on the
Internet.
Stef Slembrouck (DA web page)

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1. Introduction
1.4 What is Discourse Analysis?
Discourse Analysis:
• Concerned with whole texts rather than sentences or
clauses.
• Divides into:
1. Spoken Discourse Analysis: study of conversations,
dialogues, spoken monologues, etc.
2. Written Discourse Analysis: study of written texts, such as
essays, news, political speeches (?), etc.
• More concerned with naturally occurring data than in
made up examples.
• A collection of techniques, rather than a single
analysis.

1. Introduction
1.4 What is Discourse Analysis?
Multimodal Discourse Analysis:
• Discourse Analysis is not just concerned with the text on the
page.
• MDA explores how multiple modalities (text, image, sound,
video) combine to
make meaning.

What is the
meaning of this
“text”?

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1. Introduction
1.4 What is Discourse Analysis?
Critical Discourse Analysis:
• The use of discourse analysis techniques to reveal ideological
bias, hidden power relations, sexism, racism, etc. in discourse.
• Names: Kress, Fairclough,
van Dijk, Wodak....

1. Introduction
1.5 Why Study Discourse Analysis?
Why do we study Discourse Analysis?
1. As linguists, to find out how language works, to
improve our understanding of an important kind of
human activity
2. As educators, to find out how good texts work, so
that we can focus on teaching our students these
writing/speaking strategies.
3. As critical analists, to discover meanings in the
text which are not obvious on the surface (e.g.,
analysing a politician’s speech to see their
preconceptions).

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1. Introduction
1.7 How does DA relate to Pragmatics?
• Difficult to answer, since both fields are basically defined by the
set of people who work in the field, and their practices.
• Pragmatics has been a term used to refer all aspects of
linguistics which don’t fit inside semantics, syntax or phonology
• While semantics concerns the relation between language and
the things language refers to, pragmatics is more about the
relationship between language and its users.
• Thus: pragmatics concerns speech-acts, and what people can
infer from language but is not said (implicature, presupositions,
indirect speech acts).
• But generally concerned with choices in individual utterance,
not patterns of choices throughout a discourse.

1. Introduction
1.7 How does DA relate to Pragmatics?
It is plain that discourse analysis has objectives that lie very
close to, if not shared by, those of pragmatics. This is because
discourse is none other than a sequence of sentences in
operation -in other words utterances. But while discourse
analysts explain the interpretation of the elements in question
without going outside language, pragmatics resorts to other
ambits of human activity (beliefs, feelings, knowledge,
intentions…).

(Pragmatics and discourse analysis, by Margarida Bassols Puig)

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 Approaches to the study of language+ data used

Internal approach: looking for External approach:

internal rules that native asking how we use language
speakers use to generate to communicate
grammatically correct
sentences
Isolated sentences Any stretch of language felt to
be unified
Grammatically well-formed Achieving meaning
Without context In context
Invented or idealised Observed

1. Introduction
1.7 How does DA relate to Pragmatics?
BOTH DA and PRAGMATICS TAKE AN EXTERNAL APPROACH

“Pragmatics [is] a general cognitive, social, and cultural perspective

on linguistic phenomena in relation to their usage in forms of
behaviour.”
(Verschueren, 1999: 7)

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